Forum … or Against ’em (June 18, 2016)

When is theft not a crime? When is burglary not a crime? When is a conspiracy not a conspiracy? Apparently, when government officials are the conspirators who deliberately arrange to engage in burglary and theft and then execute upon their plan …

The Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company predated the creation of the Town of Apple Valley by something like 43 years. The Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company was created in 1945 by Newt Bass and B.J. Westlund as an adjunct to their real estate company, Apple Valley Ranchos, which was their undertaking to develop Apple Valley. They were successful in a way they never lived to see and in 1988, the Town of Valley incorporated. At that time, the newly-formed town had the opportunity to acquire, for $2.5 million, the water system that served the community from Park Water Company, which had picked up Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company the year before. Park Water provided water to Compton, Downey and Norwalk in Los Angeles County and was then owned by the Wheeler Family. The Wheeler Family offered to let the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company go, but the newly minted Apple Valley Town Council, in its wisdom, declined at that time, choosing not to convert the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company to a municipal division, concerned less about the initial expense of acquiring the utility than with the projected ongoing and constant costs of having to repair, upgrade and maintain the system. In 2011, the Carlisle Group acquired from the Wheeler Family at a cost of $102.2 million the Park Water Company, which in addition to its Los Angeles County and Apple Valley holdings, also included the Mountain Water Company, based in Missoula, Montana. In 2011, the town impaneled a so-called blue ribbon committee to consider acquiring Apple Valley Ranchos. The committee advised against it. Then in 2014, prevailing sentiment shifted when Park, which in 2012 initiated rate increases on Apple Valley Ranchos customers totaling 19 percent while completing $8.1 million in capital improvements to the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company, tagged on another 30 percent rate hike on Apple Valley Ranchos customers to be implemented from 2015 until 2017. Shortly thereafter, town officials began trading notes with Missoula city officials, where Park Water’s Mountain Water Company had likewise escalated rates and local officials in the Big Sky Country sought to use eminent domain to acquire the water company. In late 2015, Park Water Co., Apple Valley Ranchos Water Co. and Western Water Holdings LLC proposed the sale of its assets to Liberty Utilities, doing business as Liberty Western Water Holdings Inc, for $327 million. During the last week of 2015, the California Public Utilities Commission signed off on that sale. The Town of Apple Valley in the first week of 2016 then moved to condemn the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company and use its power of eminent domain to take possession of the division of Liberty Utilities which operates the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company …

I hope I do not have to explain that there is a whole school of thought out there that holds that eminent domain is tantamount to out-and-out thievery. In concept, eminent domain exists to allow the greater public good to be served when a private property owns something – land or an operation – that the government needs to accomplish what a majority of its decision makers consider to be a worthwhile undertaking. A classic example would be a circumstance where a city or county or state government wants to build a bridge over a river. By building that bridge, hundreds or thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of people every day will see the benefit of being able to cross the river without having to drive many miles to another existing bridge up or down stream. For the majority of people who must traverse the river at that point, the use of eminent domain is a benefit. Perhaps the owner of the land where the bridge is to be built has plans for his land that don’t include a bridge. Maybe he wants to construct a marina on his property adjacent to the river. Or maybe he wants to build a riverside hotel. Maybe for those possible reasons or others, he does not want to sell his property. Eminent domain is the power of the government to force that riverside land owner to sell his land, even if he does not want to …

Eminent domain can be used for other things besides acquiring land. Maybe someone owns a car factory and a war comes and the government needs the factory to build tanks. It can use eminent domain to condemn the factory and pay the owner fair market value for it and then commandeer the factory for its war materiel manufacturing needs. The point here is that eminent domain legalizes taking something from someone against his or her will. Notice I used the term legalizes, because, to my way of thinking, this in no way legitimizes that taking. I know, I know, the person who loses what he owns gets paid something. But it still grates on me that someone can be forced to give up something he possesses against his will. In any other context, we call this stealing …

I have gotten slightly adrift of where I want to go with this, as I am not zeroing in, exactly, on eminent domain. It is important, though, to understand that what I am about to focus on here plays against the backdrop of the Town of Apple Valley’s use of eminent domain. It may even explain this governmental mentality in which government officials somehow believe that they have an entitlement to steal …

Apple Valley happens to own a golf course. Golf courses are water intensive. You have to keep the fairways and greens watered. It is not as if having a golf course in the middle of the desert, where Apple Valley is located, is a good idea to begin with. It has grown even worse with the now four-year running drought. In April, Apple Valley officials were becoming concerned about the health of the grass on the golf course’s fairways and greens. At some point that month the situation was exacerbated when a power surge disabled the pumps to the town’s well that provides irrigation water for the golf course …

On April 29, workers with the Town of Apple Valley took it upon themselves to go to a waterworks control vault owned by Liberty Utilities that is proximate to the golf course and bust the lock on the a vault, thereby gaining access to the company’s meters and control valves for the water system. Once in control of Liberty’s system, or a portion thereof, town workers then conveyed Liberty’s water, later determined to be some 869,000 gallons, into the town’s golf course irrigation system. This water heist lasted for three full days, until May 2, and was carried out entirely without the knowledge of Liberty Utilities …

Precisely how many town workers were in on this caper is not known beyond the confines of Town Hall. The story is that the town’s public works director, Greg Snyder, did not tell the town manager, Frank Robinson, about what occurred until well after April 29. Whether that is entirely true is not really known, considering that Apple Valley officials have such a penchant for stealing and lying to begin with. As of this writing Robinson hasn’t seen fit to fire Snyder or any of Snyder’s minions, which I take as an indication that a lot of winking and nodding was going on …

For their part, Liberty Utilities corporate officers registered a protest over the town’s action, but stopped short of lodging a criminal complaint, although they made clear that in other cases where regular citizens have tapped into the company’s water system without authorization, the company normally files a criminal complaint with the germane law enforcement authorities. In this case, because the company is trying to make peace with the town and stay on its good side, it merely billed the town $6,754.61 for the stolen water …

No no one at the town has been disciplined either for the risk town officials who pulled off this brazen theft subjected town residents to. It seems that in tapping into Liberty’s water, which is intended for all order of human consumption – drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, etcetera – the water was siphoned off through a system that did not have a backflow preventer, meaning that contaminated water sitting in the golf course irrigating system could have washed back into Liberty’s pipes once the water pressure into the city’s system equalized …

Perhaps most disappointing in all of this? The performance of Apple Valley Sheriff’s Captain Lana Tomlin and Sheriff John McMahon. The Town of Apple Valley contracts with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement service, one of fourteen of the county’s 24 incorporated municipalities that does so. Sheriff McMahon, with his family, resides in Apple Valley. Yet he and Captain Tomlin have shrunk, absolutely shrunk, from their duty to uphold the law. They have a clear indication that the theft occurred. They even have a pretty good idea of who perpetuated the act. Yet the sheriff’s department is not even investigating the theft as a crime. That town employees took action that might poison his family by putting into his own home and the homes of his neighbors contaminated tap water is of less significance to Sheriff McMahon than maintaining a positive working relationship with Apple Valley’s governmental officials. Someone should explain to Captain Tomlin and Sheriff McMahon that seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil is not a virtue in those who are sworn to uphold the law. How does the saying go? One hand washes the other …

Source: Count Friedrich von Olsen, San Bernardino County Sentinel